An 18-year old youth who made two hoax 999 calls resulted in the emergency services combing a river for the body of a ‘missing' male and the spend of thousands of euro in the search.
At Ennis District Court yesterday, Judge Patrick Durcan sentenced Nathan Coughlan of Station Court, Ennis to 10 months after stating that the youth acted “reprehensibly" in making the hoax calls.
Judge Durcan said that the “mind boggles” at the offences committed by Mr Coughlan which would have left local people deeply concerned for the ‘missing’ person.
Detective Garda Stephen Hession said that the coastguard helicopter was scrambled on November 13th last after Nathan Coughlan made the 999 call to state that “a fella is after throwing himself into the river”.
The person taking the call told Mr Coughlan that the services were already dealing with a separate call out that involved a motorist ploughing his car through the window of an Ennis shop.
Asked if the call was a hoax, Mr Coughlan said: “No, this is genuine. This is a real call.”
Det Garda Hession said that along with the coastguard helicopter, Gardai and the fire-service arrived at the scene at the Parnell Street car-park to search the River Fergus.
Insp Tom Kennedy said that the cost of the call out of the coastguard helicopter would be at least €5,000 with the cost of the fire-brigade call out at €1,600. Insp Kennedy said that the helicopter was in the air over Ennis for over one hour searching for the missing man.
Mr Coughlan gave the emergency services a false name telling them that he was ‘Simy Doherty’.
The youth – with a string of previous convictions – followed up the hoax call with a second hoax call to the emergency services on June 16th last where he again claimed to see a man throw himself into the River Fergus.
However, Det Hession said that on this occasion, the emergency services were not scrambled as a member of the public overheard Mr Coughlan make the call when it was obvious no one had gone into the river.
Mr Coughlan was arrested by Gardai in Ennis town centre and his offence of the earlier November was detected after Gardai listened to the audio recording of the phone call.
In relation to the November offence, Det Hession said that Mr Coughlan told Gardai that he was 50/50 as to whether the individual had thrown himself into the river.
Solicitor for Mr Coughlan, John Casey described the offences as “ridiculous and stupid”.
Mr Casey said that Mr Coughlan made the call for excitement. He said: “It would look exciting to him Garda trawling the river, the sub aqua units going through the river. It was something to watch for Mr Coughlan to give him a sense of excitement.”
Mr Casey said that the November incident is an extremely serious one as it took services away from a genuine incident.
He said: “Nathan knows that he has to get a sentence for it and he is willing to take it on the chin. What he did was so far removed from a prank and I think he knows that now.”
